


The Cruelest Thing

by kissmekatie



Category: Sherlock (TV), Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms
Genre: Gen, Grief/Mourning, Reichenbach Falls
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-01-26
Updated: 2012-01-26
Packaged: 2017-10-30 04:03:06
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 249
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/327523
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kissmekatie/pseuds/kissmekatie
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In the first hours, days, he knows he should remember so much. The man who was his entire life is gone and he. Can’t. Remember.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Cruelest Thing

**Author's Note:**

> When my best friend lost her brother, she told me the worst part of the immediate aftermath was that she couldn’t remember him. That it was like all her memories of their childhood together blanked out in the face of her grief. They came back, but she said for a little while there was the fear that they never would, and that she’d lost him completely.

The worst part is the forgetting, John thinks. The things he can hardly bear to recall remain etched in the forefront of his mind with terrible clarity, while the things he is most desperate to remember tease just beyond his grasp.

He can’t forget the slightest detail of that day. The wintry sting in the air, the bright grey light. The shocking black swath of wool against colorless concrete. He can feel the tweedy texture of a coat cuff against the side of his hand, the cool slip of cotton and silky, still-warm skin against his fingertips. And the blood…the color of rubies and garnets against the bisque white skin, and two onyx-black pinpoints in a still, fixed gaze.

These are the things he wants to not see. They are the things he sees everywhere.

It’s the other things that he wants to remember, and those are the ones that escape him like a snatch of song barely-heard or a wisp of fog slipping through his fingers. In the first hours, days, he knows he _should_ remember so much. The man who was his entire life is gone and he. _Can’t. Remember._ Everything is numb and raw at the same time, and nothing will come when he tries to call up scenes from the past eighteen months. He knows they laughed and ran and looked and sat and ate and breathed and _lived_ together but he cannot make the images appear.

This is the cruelest thing of all.


End file.
